In a continuing effort to improve the quality of shipping fruits, I, the inventor, typically hybridize a large number of peach, nectarine, plum, apricot, and cherry seedlings each year. I also grow a lesser number of open pollinated seeds of each of these fruits. The present invention relates to a new and distinct variety of interspecific tree, which has been denominated varietally as ‘Plumcandy V’.
During a typical blooming season I isolate as seed parents both individual and groups of different plum trees by covering them with screen houses. A hive of bees is placed inside each such house, and bouquets to provide pollen from different plum, apricot, and interspecific plum-apricot hybrid trees are placed in buckets near the trees approximately every two days for the duration of the bloom. During 2001 one such house containing ‘Yummygem’ (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 15,809) plum was crossed by me in this manner. To pollinate this plum, I selected bouquets from several sources of apricot and interspecific plum-apricot hybrid trees without keeping specific written details. Upon reaching maturity the fruit from this plum tree was harvested and the seeds were removed, cracked, stratified and germinated as a group with the label “10P881”. They were grown as seedlings on their own root in my greenhouse and upon reaching dormancy transplanted to a cultivated area of my experimental orchard located near Le Grand, Calif. in Merced County (San Joaquin Valley). During the spring of 2004 the claimed variety was selected by me as a single plant from the group of seedlings described above. Subsequent to origination of the present variety of interspecific tree, I asexually reproduced it by budding and grafting in the experimental orchard described above, and such reproduction of plant and fruit characteristics were true to the original plant in all respects. The reproduction of the variety included the use of ‘Nemaguard’ (unpatented) rootstock upon which the present variety was true to type.
The present variety is similar to its seed parent, ‘Yummygem’ plum (U.S. Plant Pat. No. 15,809), by being a large tree, by blooming in the early season, by producing an abundance of pollen, and by producing fruit that is small in size, firm in texture, mostly red to reddish brown in skin color, and almost globose in shape, but is distinguished therefrom by producing fruit that is much sweeter with a hint of apricot flavor, that has apricot-like orange yellow flesh, and that matures about twenty-five days later.
The present variety is similar to Santa Rosa plum (unpatented) by producing fruit that matures near the first of July, that is fairly globose to ovate in shape, that is clingstone in type, and that has moderate freckling on the skin, but is distinguished therefrom by having a prolific bloom with abundant pollen and by producing fruit that is firmer, sweeter, less acidic toward both the skin and stone in taste, and orange yellow in flesh color instead of red and light yellow.